“Midnight in Paris” is the right time and place for Woody Allen

My fellow movie blogger Peg Aloihas already given you her review of Woody Allen’s latest, “Midnight in Paris,” and now that I’ve seen it, too, it’s time for me to weigh in.

I concur with Peg, and most of the critics.

This is the finest Woody has been in years. In fact, the word that best describes it is one I rarely if ever use: lovely. Lovely and charming. The writer-director’s recent budget-dictated forays into European location shoots has been well-documented, but after several pictures on the Continent, all the pieces have finally come together. I had a goofy grin on my face for most of the second half.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that he can translate his famous skill at creating a mythical version of New York City to the capital of France? Fitting really, considering the film involves multiple levels of fantasy. His Paris is as beautiful – and as unreal – as his on-screen vision of his beloved Manhattan.

Owen Wilson stars as Gil, a restless Hollywood screenwriter visiting the city with his fiance Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents (Mimi Kennedy and Kurt Fuller) as her businessman father tries to close a deal with French colleagues. Gil has written a novel in an attempt to break from his life as a hack and Paris inspires him to go deeper. In fact, he wants to move there to commune with the spirits of the great artists of the 1920s who lived and partied there, like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso and Josephine Baker.

This does not go over well with Inez or her parents and soon Gil is taking nighttime strolls through the city until a certain corner at a certain time of night brings a vintage Peugeot up the street to whisk him away to the cafes and salons of the Lost Generation where he meets all his idols. As well as Adriana (Marion Cotillard), an aspiring couturier and muse to multiple men.

Before long, he is sneaking out every night, lying to his soon-to-be family, having his book read and critiqued by Gertrude Stein, falling in love with Adriana and contemplating staying in his own personal “golden age.” In the present, he seeks the expertise of the First Lady of France (Carla Bruni) in the guise of a museum guide, bonds with a young Parisian seller of nostalgia items (Lea Seydoux) and endures excursions with Inez’s pompous friends (Michael Sheen – McAdams’ real-life love – and Nina Arianda).

So much has been said about the performances of those playing the writers, musicians and artists of the past, that I think Wilson hasn’t gotten his due. He’s flat-out wonderful. And a good deal of the movie’s charm flows from him. Not a conventional choice to play the usual nebbishy Woody stand-in, what with his hybrid good old boy/California surfer dude vibe, he doesn’t even try and takes the role in a completely different direction.

He’s amusingly befuddled by the turn of events, but jumps right in. He comes alive in this bygone Bohemia and likewise Wilson comes alive on screen. He hasn’t seemed this engaged in a while. And he doesn’t try on any Woodyisms or stammers; he’s at ease in his unease. Whatever led Allen to this casting choice, I’d like some more in the future please.

Part of the fun is how the fantastical elements of the story blend with “reality” as to barely make a ripple. And Wilson is what sells it. When discussing the dream-like events that have unfolded with one of his new artist compatriots, he even off-handedly says that of course they’d like it because they’re a surrealist.

And what of those other actors? Corey Stoll and Adrien Brody are hoots. Kathy Bates knows that she has to do very little to evoke the commanding presence of Stein and she nails it. Leydoux is luminous. And if Inez, her parents and her friends are a little over-the-top in their caricatures of ugly Americans, at least the actors do a good job making you hate them. But just as with actual people like this, a little goes a long way.

Finally, oh my, Marion Cotillard. How can you not fall in love with Marion Cotillard? I did. What ideal casting as the woman men of all time periods go crazy for. A woman from another time as well as a women out of time. She is perfect and perfection.

How satisfying to see that “Midnight in Paris” is also shaping up to be one of Woody Allen’s biggest box office successes in years. It’s opening weekend take had the highest per-screen average of any film released this year, and is the 13th highest of all time. And each week it has landed in the top 10, despite it’s relatively smaller grosses.

One last thing: For those “I miss the old Woody Allen comedies” people out there, there is one very short sequence late in the film that made me think of vintage “Love and Death.”

“Bop Decameron,” Woody’s next film and set in Italy and Spain, just jumped to the top of my Most Anticipated Films of 2012 list.